By Anita Huslin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 19, 2006; C01
The hot, steaming maw of summer is panting into your face, and all you want is a little shot of something with Freon.
This, however, is not what Patty Ivey has in mind.
She wants you instead in her purple and amber-walled chamber next to the canal in Georgetown, with the sunlight blazing through its plastic-sealed windows (to keep the heat in ) and the humidifier loaded and ready in the corner. Just in case it's not muggy enough.
The rest of the Code Red world is blaring alerts and cautions -- Find air conditioning! Stay inside! Avoid strenuous exercise! Drink lots of water! But inside the Down Dog Yoga studio there is, even with the wall thermometer at 92 degrees, barely enough space amid 30 supplicants to wedge another mat onto the floor. Several ceiling fans turn lethargically, barely moving the hot air around the room.
"You will have lots of opportunity to shine and sweat tonight," Ivey says, smiling, the air in the room as invigorating as a tepid sauna. "Embrace the heat. The battle is in your mind."
Students smooth towels over their mats and sit expectantly. Sweat is already starting to bead on their faces. Their expressions are blank. The point is not to think about the suffering they are about to embrace.
For the next 90 minutes, Ivey will guide her class through the rigors of power vinyasa yoga. Baron Baptiste, former Philadelphia Eagles trainer, ESPN2 fitness guru, author of "My Daddy Is a Pretzel" and a yogi, developed the practice. It's an amalgam of other disciplines -- ashtanga, iyengar, bikram -- performed in mind-boggling heat. It's all about the poses, stripped of the religion, New Age flair and fluffy mysticism, or so his Web site claims.
"The beauty of heat," says Anita Killian, a Boston financial analyst who popped in for a fix before flying to Europe, "is that it teaches you to get out of the way of yourself."
The students start with a child's pose, a few down dogs and a trio of Oooooohhhhhhmmms. Then Ivey encourages them to access their ujjayi -- Exhale! Inhale! Breath fills the room like an invisible steam bath. The numbers on the wall thermometer start to rise.
In the front row, a muscular man with a headband to wick the sweat away breathes enthusiastically, infusing the room with his Darth Vaderesque ujjayi, loud and steamy. All that exhaling mingles with sweat to boost the humidity of the room, making it even hotter.
"Heat rejuvenates you," the man, Rafael Raval, later insists. "After a while it's addictive."
Next to him is Ronnie Jersky, a retired curriculum specialist who has attended yoga boot camps run by Baptiste in Mexico and has become an instructor of the practice.
"Baron Baptiste points out you've got to feel to heal, so when you get that it's very liberating," Jersky says. "Stress, you learn, becomes your best friend. Allows you to appreciate freedom."
A woman in the back row struggles to do a headstand, gravity dragging her legs down, as Jersky assumes the pose, rock-solid. Even Ivey's pink tank top is dampening, and a V of sweat seeps through the lotus flower on the back of her yoga pants as she walks around the room coaching:
"As you come into this place of fight or flight, learn the power of staying!"
The theory, Ivey explains as she glides among her students, correcting their positions, is that engaging your body will allow your mental and emotional sides to expand. It's about being willing to go someplace uncomfortable, Ivey says, letting your breathing take your mind off the physical exertion.
Like that famous yogi, Yogi Berra, said: "It ain't the heat, it's the humility."
The wall indicator is showing 95 degrees, with 60 percent humidity. If you plugged these numbers into the National Weather Service heat index calculator, it would read 113 degrees.
"Find a pose you'd like to buy into," Ivey says. "Go, Brian, go!"
She cheers a sweat-drenched man in T-shirt and shorts who is flopping on his belly, struggling to grab his ankles behind him in the basket pose. "It's so cleansing you don't need to get facials this month!"
Now it's 97 degrees, with 66 percent humidity. Heat index: 126 degrees.
"Work your elbow to the middle of your thigh and find your breath!" she tells them in the middle of eagle pose. "Your mouth is closed, while you access your ujjayi. Exhale! Inhale!
"This is not a water break, guys -- keep the fire burning! Handstand -- five, four, three, two . . . one. Open your mouth, let a sigh out -- "
Amazingly, none of the students executes the head-butt-the-teacher pose. They just blow exuberantly, obediently filling the room until it feels like the inside of a hot air balloon. All that breath has a faint loaminess. All that sweat, surprisingly, has no stench. All that hair is drenched and limp.
"It's not about being pretty," Ivey tells you. "It's about trying."
Ivey has her students down on the floor now, rocking in the boat pose, then finally, lying on their backs in shavasana, which is, appropriately enough, the corpse pose.
This is the best part, of course -- transformation by perspiration.
When the students step out of the studio, it's 92 degrees, and the evening feels cool.